Interview: Karel Helsen, FTTH Council Europe

By Pauline | Published: June 10, 2009

This article originally appeared on fibresystems.org.

Karel Helsen

Karel Helsen is a busy man. Not only does he run the broadband communications business at fibre maker Draka, but he has just taken on a new job as the president of the FTTH Council Europe for the next two years. Hailing from Amsterdam, a city that’s often viewed as the showcase for fibre-to-the-home in Europe, Helsen appears to have the perfect credentials for the job. But what exactly does he have to do? Pauline Rigby finds out.

Read More »

Posted in Next-gen access | Tagged | Comments closed

From the show floor: CIP

By Pauline | Published: March 25, 2009

This article originally appeared on the fibresystems.org blog.

If there’s one company I look forward to talking to, it’s the UK’s Centre for Integrated Photonics (CIP), because they always seem to have something interesting going on. At ECOC last September, CIP wowed attendees with its demonstration of a 32-channel multi-wavelength laser. The component contained two 16-channel laser arrays, with each channel being directly modulated.

This device is aimed at WDM-PON applications, where a single transmitter could replace 32 separate devices and a modulator, allowing all the optics at the PON headend to be collapsed down onto a single linecard. One of the benefits of GPON and EPON technologies is that they simplify fibre management and economize on equipment space in the central office; the multi-wavelength laser could bring both of those benefits to WDM-PON equipment.

Read More »

Posted in Components, Next-gen access | Tagged | Comments closed

Amsterdam Citynet scores a home run for fibre

By Pauline | Published: February 4, 2009

This article originally appeared in FibreSystems Europe magazine Dec 2008/Jan 2009 p16.

Amsterdam’s municipal fibre network has become a showcase for fibre-to-the-home in Europe. Pauline Rigby took a trip to the Dutch capital to see how the build out is progressing.

Amsterdam

In a secret location in an Amsterdam basement, the world’s largest POP (point of presence) has just been commissioned. With more than 13,000 individual fibres entering the site, and space for multiple service providers to install their broadband equipment, you might expect the POP to occupy a large physical area. In reality, the room is about the size of a classroom, and the 13,000 fibres are four bunches of cables that a person could almost encircle with their hands. It’s the modern equivalent of the old copper telephone exchange — but it takes up about one fifth of the space.

Read More »

Posted in Next-gen access | Tagged | Comments closed

Intel's silicon detector is a runaway success

By Pauline | Published: December 8, 2008

This article originally appeared on fibresystem.org.

For some years now, Intel has been looking for a way to “siliconize” photonics. The chip giant wants to build optical devices on a silicon substrate to drive the manufacturing process to higher volumes and lower cost. Now the company says it has made a breakthrough in one of the key components that would be required — a silicon-based optical detector.

Intel has added germanium to silicon to create an avalanche photodiode (APD) that is better at detecting high-speed, low-intensity signals than existing devices. The results have been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

“This is the first time that a silicon photonics device has better performance than any recorded performance from an equivalent device in III-V materials, specifically indium phosphide,” claims Mario Paniccia, Intel fellow and director of the company’s photonics technology lab.

Read More »

Posted in Components | Tagged | Comments closed

100G backers divided on best approach

By Pauline | Published: December 3, 2008

This article was originally published on fibresystems.org.

This summer the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) decided to forge ahead with the standardization of optical modules for 100 Gbit/s networking based on a modulation format called dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK).

DP-QPSK cuts the symbol rate on the fibre by a factor of four, by transmitting two bits of data per clock cycle on each of two polarizations. Thus a 100 Gbit/s data rate is reduced to a symbol rate of just 25 Gbaud on the fibre, which mitigates the impact of chromatic dispersion — an effect that causes high-speed pulses to spread out as they travel down the fibre.

“We have selected an implementation approach supported by a critical mass of photonic component vendors and users,” claimed David Stauffer of IBM, and the OIF’s PLL Working Group chair.

However, it seems that no sooner did the OIF give its blessing to DP-QPSK, than the dissenters started to crawl out of the woodwork.

Read More »

Posted in Components | Tagged | Comments closed

Draka, Bell Labs go ultra-long on 40G

By Pauline | Published: September 24, 2008

This article originally appeared on fibresystems.org.

Although network operators are keen to deploy 40 Gbit/s wavelengths to upgrade their capacity on terrestrial routes, submarine cable systems have stayed at 10 Gbit/s because of the distances involved. But tomorrow in a post-deadline paper to be presented at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC), researchers will describe an experiment that demonstrates the feasibility of transmitting 40 Gbit/s traffic over transoceanic distances.

The experiment involved sending 81 channels at 40 Gbit/s over a distance of 11,520 km — setting a new distance-capacity record.

Read More »

Posted in Optical systems | Tagged | Comments closed

Vendors unite to develop next generation Ethernet

By Pauline | Published: July 7, 2008

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of FibreSystems Europe magazine.

John D’Ambrosia

The standardization of higher data rates is vital if Ethernet is to continue as a ubiquitous end-to-end protocol. Pauline Rigby finds out how standards are progressing.

Ethernet has traditionally evolved in multiples of 10, from the first successful commercial version of Ethernet at 10 Mbit/s through Fast Ethernet (100 Mbit/s), Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbit/s) to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 Gbit/s) – the highest speed available today. But the next multiple — 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE) — hit a speed bump when disagreement arose between different interests within the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG).

Read More »

Posted in Components, Optical systems | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Cool electronics: just add water

By Pauline | Published: June 6, 2008

This article originally appeared on fibresystem.org.

We’ve all been taught that electronics and water don’t mix, but researchers at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory say that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, they are proposing that tiny rivers of water be used to cool three-dimensional stacks of silicon chips in future generations of server processors and communications ICs.

Not only would this enhance the performance of the silicon, the heat harvested from the chips could be piped into heating and hot water systems to create the ultimate “green” data centre.

To this end, IBM researchers in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin have demonstrated a prototype that integrates a cooling system into a 3D chip by piping pressurized water between each layer in the stack.

Read More »

Posted in Components | Comments closed

Opinion: Beginnings of a bubble?

By Pauline | Published: February 25, 2008

This article originally appeared on fibresystems.org.

Bob Metcalfe, often called the “father of Ethernet”, will be delivering a keynote speech at the OFC/NFOEC show tomorrow about the inevitability of Terabit Ethernet, which he says will get started by 2015.

And before that today, George Gilder will be giving a the closing keynote presentation at the 2008 Executive Forum, which is organized by the Optical Society of America (OSA) in conjunction with media house Pennwell. Although the title has not been revealed, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s going to have something to do with the “exaflood” — the collective wave of data that’s going to overwhelm the existing Internet infrastructure in the near future unless there’s significant investment in new equipment.

Isn’t it exciting to see such big numbers being bandied about? An “exabyte” is one thousand petabytes, which in turn is one thousand terabytes, or put another way, it’s 1018 bytes of data. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly 50 thousand times the amount of information in the US Library of Congress if it were held in digital form.

Read More »

Posted in Optical systems | Comments closed